Except for the employee pensions, reduced bus service and political backlash.

The city council of Austin, Texas, is trying to persuade city voters to fund a $600 million light-rail line. So the local newspaper, The Austin American-Statesman, came to Oregon to conduct an in-depth examination of the rail system that's given Texan transit wonks a case of "Portland envy."

For PDX readers, the article has a "de Tocqueville on a train" quality. It's an outsider's perspective from an ally in weirdness, telling Portland what we've gotten right, and what nobody would want to copy.

"Transit ridership [...] is easily outpacing Portland’s population growth," reporter Ben Wear writes. "And the current level is almost three times the ridership that Austin’s Capital Metro tallied last year while serving, primarily with buses, an area with a population only about 15 percent smaller than Portland’s."

Even better: Because Portland scotched the Mt. Hood Freeway and started planning light-rail lines in the 1970s, it got its system at a relative bargain.

The cost of light-rail projects to regional transit agency TriMet and Portland City Hall has been about $4.1 billion so far. It would cost Austin more than double that amount to build the same system now.

Light rail construction costs nationwide have been increasing at a rate far outstripping inflation for reasons that aren’t really clear. Portland’s Orange Line will cost more than $200 million a mile. Based on the $1.4 billion cost estimate for the initial 9.5 miles of Austin light rail — $147 million a mile — building a 60-mile system comparable to Portland’s would cost $8.8 billion.